And Now, Meet the Drama Queen

Since there is nothing else to do while we await the arrival of grandchild number one, perhaps this is the perfect time to introduce the other migrane machines--I mean “adorable teenagers”--in our life.

You already know something about The Daughter, who is soon to give us The Granddaughter. She is Granny’s oldest. Granny’s other bundle of joy is a high school sophomore we’ll call The Drama Queen, for reasons that will soon become obvious.

Our lovely Drama Queen--like her mother and sister, she is lovely--has only two settings: Totally Drama and Comatose. The Totally Drama setting is on whenever she is awake. At this setting, everything is critically important, and everything is an emergency.

Let’s say, for example, that Gramps eats her two-day-old half-eaten hamburger out of the refrigerator. Her response, in a loud, high pitched voice that wakes up the neighbor’s cat three blocks away, will include the following significant facts:

• I was going to eat that.
• You knew I was going to eat that.
• Now there is nothing to eat in the entire house and I will die of starvation.
• Everybody else always eats my food and I never get to eat what I want.
• I was going to eat that.
• My life is completely unfair.
• I was going to eat that.

Listen in to this representative conversation between Drama Queen and Granny-to-be:

DQ: Can you pick my friends and me up from the movies on Thursday?
G: Thursday? You mean Thanksgiving Day?
DQ: Yeah, I guess.
G: That is a family day. You’re not going out with your friends.
DQ: Oh my God, Mom! I have plans!
G: It’s Thanksgiving Day, for heaven’s sake. We have plans on Thanksgiving Day every year. Didn’t you think of that?
DQ: But Mom, you know I wanted to do this for a long time.
G: You’re staying home with us.
DQ: That’s not fair!
G: Nevertheless, that’s what’s happening.
DQ: You never let me do what I want. This is so not fair. I’m so mad my whole body is shaking. I want to scream.
G: Yes, dear, that’s nice.
DQ: Ooooh, I’m so mad. That’s not fair. (Stomps off down the hall.)

And that’s our middle child in a nutshell. Her entire world crashes down around her every day, but somehow she just manages to keep it together until the next big crisis, such as when her trollish parents won’t give her a birthday party worthy of MTV’s My Super Sweet 16.

NEXT TIME: Meet the final member of the cast, my son, who believes that life, liberty, the pursuit of happiness and eight hours a day of uninterrupted Xbox time are all natural human rights. Let’s call him Xboy.